The point is there was no global outcry. You hadn’t heard about it had you?

It is only when Israel responds to an entire year of daily missile attacks by Hezbollah that attention is paid.

UNIFIL was warned by Israel to get out of the way before they entered to stop the attacks by Hezbollah which UNIFIL couldn’t/wouldn’t.

Israel warned UNIFIL well in advance to get out of the way. Why are they still there?

Until now…

it has failed to investigate a single one of the more than 3,000 Hezbollah arms depots and other military sites targeted by Israel since October—including bombed-out bases run by Hezbollah’s supposed environmental group “Green Without Borders.”

Bear in mind that Hezbollah’s been firing missiles into Israel daily since 8 October 2023. So much for UNIFIL “peacekeeping”.

https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/pros-and-cons-salvaging-or-ditching-unifil

nobody should be shooting at UN forces.

“Hezbollah members or their local supporters harassed UNIFIL patrols, threatened them with weapons, fired at them, stole their equipment”

Hezbollah have killed at least one…

“After Pvt. Sean Rooney, a UNIFIL peacekeeper from Ireland, was killed in December, surveillance camera footage reportedly showed armed men surrounding his patrol and declaring “We are Hezbollah.” A Lebanese military tribunal formally accused several Hezbollah members of the murder, and the group reportedly handed the primary suspect over to Lebanese authorities. “ https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/battle-unifils-independence-part-2-facts-ground

It is naive to think that facts alone can win in a battle of ideas. Why do you think Coca Cola still advertises heavily?

Look at how AJ lie in an example unrelated to this conflict: This video was at the time of a G9 summit where the journalist deliberately made a protestor look like a crazy suicidal maniac who had to be taken away by police for his own good.

They mistakenly showed the evidence in the video that he wasn’t crazy. Read the video description.

Fair point.

• Meanwhile, the right wing media sweeps it aside with inhumane, Onion-level headlines like “UN revises Gaza death toll, almost 50% less women and children killed than previously reported”. As though that…justifies something?!

Are you saying that when Hamas are caught lying it shouldn’t be reported?

Were you also outraged when Hamas said 500 Palestians were killed by IDF bombing AlAhli hospital and all the media outlets reported this as fact but the responsible ones later apologized and reported that was a blatant Hamas lie?

Should we never correct stories when the facts come to light?

Similarly there were no children killed by Hamas during October 7 despite some crazy Israeli guy lying in his “eyewitness” report (later debunked). I’m sure you were happy to have that be corrected.

I am happy for all of the above to be corrected without having to frame it as justification for atrocities.

Israel claims it has killed 17,000 militants, without providing evidence. It does not provide an estimate of civilians killed in Gaza.

And Hamas doesn’t provide an estimate of militants killed.

Well yes. Israel always retaliates disproportionately. Yet Hamas keep repeating their attacks expecting Allah will magically produce a different result. Commonly known as the very definition of stupidity.

Are you implying they caused more injuries on October 7 than Hamas?

Telegram group chats are unencrypted

Not quite true. They are server-side encrypted, not end-to-end. Still bad and I had no idea until I looked it up just now (thanks to you).

I use Gboard keyboard on my phone which undermines my Signal privacy. I could use my laptop instance of Signal to prevent leakage.

Telegram successfully fought against attempt of blocking in Russia in 2018 by providing regular updates and using different techniques to avoid blocking.

I too heard Russia claimed they could not block it. Could be deliberate theatre to bolster its reputation.

It seems Russia has a back door key into Telegram.

Edit: Russia is complaining about the arrest.

Pavel Durov has visited Russia more than 50 times since his “exile” in 2014

Can someone please paraphrase the following which I didn’t understand?

Somebody raised to believe they have high IQ is more likely to fall for this than somebody raised to think less of their own intellectual capabilities. Subjective validation is a quirk of the human mind. We all fall for it.

But if you think you’re unlikely to be fooled, you will be tempted instead to apply your intelligence to “figure out” how it happened. This means you can end up using considerable creativity and intelligence to help the psychic fool you by coming up with rationalisations for their “ability”.

And because you think you can’t be fooled, you also bring your intelligence to bear to defend the psychic’s claim of their powers. Smart people (or, those who think of themselves as smart) can become the biggest, most lucrative marks.

Blasts is only six letters. Slams is only five. That is why they get used in headlines so often.

to the point of being an apartheid state that treats non-Jewish citizens worse

Maybe in practice, but certainly not in law.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that “Arab Israelis are citizens of Israel with equal rights” and states that “The only legal distinction between Arab and Jewish citizens is not one of rights, but rather of civic duty. Since Israel’s establishment, Arab citizens have been exempted from compulsory service in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).”

https://web.archive.org/web/20160803050854/http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/mfaarchive/2000_2009/2001/8/arab israelis

Secular democracy for Palestinians? That is delusional.

When Palestinians ain’t leaving and Israelis ain’t leaving there is no other realistic option (regardless of our political leaning and whether we think Jews have a right to statehood in that part of the world.).

Here’s hoping the publicity boosts his career and encourages discussions about legalisation of weed in Romania.

It would have been seen by Terrorists as a reward for Oct 7 and encourage further attached.

OTOH establishing a Palestinian state would have been a precursor to a 2SS which is a hopeful path towards peace.

Likud (and Hamas) are both against a 2SS therefore, as you say, this vote count is no surprise.

As if you didn’t know my point…

Their credibility is damaged enough to be sceptical about this report (which is not even medical research).

And here is another example:

They published (and retracted) a key study that linked anti-malarial drug HCQ to increased risk of death and irregularity in heart rhythms in coronavirus patients.

Lancet is the same journal which published Andrew Wakefield’s bs claim that vaccines cause autism.